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Friday, January 31, 2014

I have a good friend who is a Christian. He's a really cool guy and he's currently getting a degree in theology. Recently he posted about a relative whose husband was having some medical issues. The first post went like this:

As you can see, my friend is truly a believer. An otherwise half-assed Christian wouldn't go into fasting and prayer if they didn't truly believe in it. His conviction is commendable, and I feel he truly believes that the praying and fasting will help. So convinced is he, in fact, that he is practically certain that God can and will work wonders, and he sounds optimistic. After all, for the believer, anything is possible with God on your side.

The sad part is however...

Perhaps sadder than the earnest prayers of my friend, his family members, his friends, and his church (who all left dozens of "I'm praying for him" posts) not working is the fact that, even after this immense failure of prayer, their reaction is to pray more!

As a rationalist, I can't help but see the belief in prayer as a type of delusion because of examples like this.

If something proves the opposite of what you believe, but you continue believing in it regardless, that's delusional. And I find it sad. The impotence of prayer isn't something to keep trying at once it fails. The neglect of God isn't likely going to change if you just pray harder.The fact is, prayer simply doesn't work.I think my friend, who is genuinely a smart guy, would probably be more inclined to realize this if he would just take a step back from his faith for a moment, take the religious goggles off, wipe the dogmatic fog of conviction from them, and take another look at his faith with a new clarity.As an atheist, when I see things like this it only confirms my atheistic belief that God does not exist. After all, it's a simple observation. If the Christian God was real, the prayers would work. They'd work all of the time. They'd work so often, one would assume, that atheists would likely have a hard time explaining it. But that's not the case. In actuality, prayers never work. The Benson study showed this and the countless examples like the above act as a constant reminder of this. In fact, the impotence of prayer suggests, if anything, that atheists are on the right track--God doesn't exist and so prayers don't get answered. As for the religious who think God answers their prayers all of the time, well, it seems to me that they just haven't stepped back to look at the full picture and give it proper scrutiny. When you look at it from the outside in, it looks less like miracles from God and more like coincidence. It looks a lot less like a loving God concerned with your personal affairs than it does simple, cruel indifferent fate playing out like it always has. Although I get the appeal of prayer. When I was a believer I prayed all the time. I told my friends I was praying for them, and they prayer for me. And it felt good knowing people cared. When things went right, everything was right in the world, and it confirmed my belief in God as a loving God who answered prayers. When things went wrong, well, I just took it as God telling me there was something I needed to learn from the experience. But now, looking back in retrospect it all just seems like wishful thinking to me.

Friday, January 24, 2014

I wrote to a good friend of mine who I grew up with, went to school with, and who has subsequently become a Catholic priest with a PhD in theology. He's a great guy. Kind. Brilliant. And he found my question worthy enough to pass on to a fellow theologian. We discussed it, and after a few email exchanges, I still am not clear there is a satisfactory answer to be found.

Basically, what the problem amounts to is, in a broad sense, a problem of description vs. attribution. My argument goes like this.

1. God (according to theologians) is transcendent.

2. God (according to theologians) is love.

3. If God is transcendent he is outside of, or beyond, reality.

4. Love, as we understand it, must be a part of reality or we cannot experience it.

5. Therefore if God is transcendent, God cannot be love.

Likewise...

1. If the true nature of God (according to theologians) is love

2. Love, as we understand it, must be a part of reality or we cannot experience it

3. Therefore love is not transcendent of reality

4. Therefore God cannot be transcendent

I asked my theological adviser, who wished to remain anonymous at this time, whether or not he felt that his idea of "love" was simply an attribute imported into the template of a transcendent God. After all, from a philosophical standpoint, it makes sense to grant God's transcendence to the theistic position, since I see no sign in the real world of God's interaction (only Christians see signs of the Christian God's interactions, but nobody else's god's interactions, and vise versa).

As such, as a nonbeliever who sees the lack of supernatural intervention simply a predicted consequence of the atheistic position, I can allow the definition of a transcendent entity, in which case, I'd take the agnostic position.

As an a priori assumption, it seems valid, because there are no objections I can raise to it (after all, that's part of the benefits of offering an unfalsifiable hypothesis).

However, saying the transcendent God is also an entity of love requires the ad hoc import of the theologian's classical definition of God, which presumably stems from centuries of theological tradition as well as their idea of God derived from scripture.

In other words, the theologian is starting with the definition of God they like, and then are trying to work toward it, instead of actually describing God and deriving a valid definition. But this is begging the question, in the technical sense of the term, and cannot, therefore, be valid.

So, for the sake of argument, granting the theologian the premise that God exists, and the problem which arises is simply that God can either be a loving entity or a transcendent entity, but not both.

The answer I was given was that my understanding of transcendence was too narrow, and that God needn't be fully transcendent, and therefore part of God exists relationally to us, the love part, which we can experience.

But I'm not so sure.

It strikes me as rather a far stretch of the imagination to assume that God's loving nature, should such a being exist, depends solely on how one chooses to define the term "transcendence."

I mean, for the WHOLE existence of God to be forced to conform to our subjective understanding of a single definition seems rather absurd.

If God truly existed, I would presume there would be a surefire way of settling this quandary. But it seems my theological adviser simply did not want to budge from the traditional template of a transcendent and loving God that he holds to be an absolute and incontrovertible truth.

Now, that isn't to suggest his suggestion is entirely unsound. Philosophically speaking, God could be only partially, or even potentially, transcendent, but not necessarily or absolutely transcendent--whatever that could possibly mean.

Whereas love could still be a necessary condition of God's nature, but it would merely be a transcendent love--whatever that could possibly mean.

But this raises a whole new set of epestemic problems, like how would we know any of this? How could we demonstrate it? And what would it mean to say love is an entity that is partially or potentially transcendent? One possible answer would be that our souls, or spirits, are transcendent too, and exist relationally to God via, and through, the Holy Spirit. But then, that changes the subject off of God's nature and onto our own, while importing supernatural assumptions, like the existence of spirits or souls. And, again, how would we know this? How could we prove it?

See, the only way to get to the God theologians like to profess belief in is to always import other assumptions into the template. This, however, is merely a naming game of ascribing theologically interesting attributes to God, not an actual form of deriving a valid definition from God.

When you get into the esoteric territory of theology, it becomes clear to me that the only surefire method of settling any difficulty is to either admit you don't know, or to dogmatically stick to faith-based conviction until it resembles the truth you like best.

In the end, I think my initial objection still stands. As such, a transcendent being wouldn't be the God of Christianity. A loving God, if you accept the theologians terms, conditions, and rationalizations which bypass all the obvious examples of God's malicious and capricious characteristics as described in the Bible, then God could possibly be a Personal entity of love that we can experience and come to know through a relationship with him. However, I have seen no evidence for this.

By my account, this only seems to suggest God is extremely well hidden, should he exist, but not having the evidence to say God exists the assumption needn't even be made. For all intents and purposes, God needn't exist, and that matches with observation. Thus the atheist assumption that there is no God is warranted.

But, if by the slim chance there is a God, minus the invalid assumption that God is love, then it seems to me that he has transcended himself into imperceptible irrelevance, and he is so complex as that we cannot fully understand him; so much so that even raising the question is futile. Anything we might think we experienced in terms of a relationship with God could never be fully grasped, other than to say we experienced some strange imperceptible thing, and unable to make sense of it, again, God becomes irrelevant. Also, how would we know it was God for certain, and not a hallucination, a delusion, or something else entirely?

At any rate, I am still open to opinions and suggestions. But then again, if you feel like you've wasted your valuable time by reading this, as so often seems to be the case when engaging with theology, then don't bother. Just be glad that even accredited theologians don't have any persuasive answers either.

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

"There is a science that has for its object only things incomprehensible. Contrary to all other sciences, it treats only of what cannot fall under our senses. Hobbes calls it the kingdom of darkness. It is a country, where everything is governed by laws, contrary to those which mankind are permitted to know in the world they inhabit. In this marvelous region, light is only darkness; evidence is doubtful or false; impossibilities are credible: reason is a deceitful guide; and good sense becomes madness. This science is called theology, and this theology is a continual insult to the reason of man." --Baron d'Holbach (Good Sense.)

Monday, January 20, 2014

An excellent definition of atheism provided by online persona AdamHazzard.

"As an atheist, I believe gods exist. Lots of them.In fact I believe two classes of gods exist: narrative and hypothetical.

Narrative gods are marvelous beings with unprecedented, extraordinary powers or origins whose acts are described in legends, folk tales, mythologies, and religious narratives around the world. Examples of narrative gods include Zeus, Vishnu, Nyame, Yahweh, Baal, and countless others.Hypothetical gods are the gods of philosophy: they exist as hypotheses or free-floating definitions. They are distinct from narrative gods, though some belief systems may conflate a narrative god with a hypothetical god.

Theists agree that gods exist in this sense, but make a further claim: One or more of these gods has an objective existence outside of narrative or hypothesis.I reject that claim as unevidenced: therefore I am an atheist." --AdamHazzard

Sunday, January 19, 2014

I've been busy doing cover design and publishing my books, which is why there has been a lull in blog posts recently.

That said, if you're interested, my anthology on blasphemy, Reason Against Blasphemy, is now available in a second edition (paperback) with a gorgeous matte finish cover. It's a lovely book collecting the freethinkers G.W. Foote and Robert G. Ingersoll's writings on the subject of blasphemy, and it's very enlightening. I highly recommend you get a copy (available on Amazon.com).

Of course, unrelated to religion, I have just finished writing a new novella (222 pages to be exact) entitled The Scarecrow & Lady Kingston Rough Justice. It's only been out a week and already has a 5 star review on Amazon.com! Which is great for me, especially considering I haven't promoted it yet.

Also, the deconverstion anthology Beyond an Absence of Faith will be out in the next month or two. I promise updates as it comes along!

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

So Randal Rauser, a Christian apologist, was complaining because a whole lot of atheists were offering him some heavy criticism. Of course, Randal did what Randal always does in such a situation, he pulled out the "I have credentials" trump card, and made appeals to authority, and threw out ad hominems.

A typical conversation with Randal usually goes something like this:

I called him on it, and he threatened to block me if I didn't "add to the conversation."

I would pull a screencap to show the uncordial response to my comments, but I can no longer access the comments thread because either it has disappeared:

Or because I am banned.

How did I get banned you might wonder? (Other than the above comment where I pointed out that calling another doctorate a troll is bad form?)

I followed up that comment with a comment that I was making an observation about Randal's overall defensiveness, and that I felt he needed to act more like a scholar and a professor and try to educate those of us laymen who don't understand what he's getting at, instead of lording his credentials over us, appealing to authority, and throwing out ad hominems. I believe the term I used was "butt hurt" and noted that instead of taking everything personal it would benefit him to grow a thicker skin--after all, criticism abounds when you inevitably think you're right as much as Randal feels he is right. Which is always.

Then Randal blocked me. I could no longer *edit comments and everything I posted was frozen in *red with the Disqus warning that I am no longer allowed to post in the conversation.

Also, my previous comments such as the one above where Randal called a fellow doctorate a troll has since seemingly disappeared (see my initial screencap which I had to pull from the cache in order to prove I had made the comment).

Whatever.

It's not the first time Randal has censored those he's disagreed with either. He's deleted comments and deleted entire posts before.

And it seems he's done so again.

Of the three most recent posts in Randal's recent news and blog items list, the two in which Randal was taking a thrashing from his critics, the Russell Blackford post and the Atheism/off-hand comments post, have mysteriously vanished.

But the third one, which doesn't seem to have garnered much interest, is still up.

What can we make of this?

Either too much blog traffic crashed the posts in question or Randal has deleted them. He also could have blocked my I.P. address for those posts, since Disqus is advanced enough to do that.

I'll let you be the judge of which event is more likely.

My personal opinion is Randal Rauser needs to take a break from the Internet... permanently... lest he risk continuing to prove how much of an Unprofessional he really is.

*Update*

Mike D. Informs me that both threads are still up and functioning, which means that it's only me that's had my i.p. address blocked and I still cannot comment. Oh, well. No big loss.

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Steven Jake, the author of the up and coming blog TheChristian Agnostic,[1] wrote a rather thorough
response to my lengthy comment asking him about the state of the evidence
regarding the historical Jesus.

I am pleased he took the time to write a thorough response.
I only feel that such a thorough response deserves my own more detailed
response as my initial comment was merely that—a comment. So without further
ado I will address some of Steven Jake’s comments and concerns.

Initially Steven Jake (henceforth SJ) posted a quote from
New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman claiming that there is an abundance of evidence for a
historical Jesus. I merely contested this claim asking for what evidence we
have that would be considered historically reliable.

As I see it there is none. That doesn’t mean, however, I
don’t think there wasn’t a historical Jesus, just that we
cannot prove if there was or wasn’t and so I remain agnostic as to the
historicity of Jesus—not a mythicist as Steven Jake seems to assume.

Although please do not misunderstand me, I do not intend to
demean the mythicist position as so many historicists do simply because they
all seemingly take for granted the dearth of evidence contrary to
what we would expect to find for any other well recognized historical
event or figure of antiquity. Most settle for what other historians would call
superficial evidence if it were applied to anyone other than Jesus to the same
degree, which is quite telling I think. Like I said, it’s no reason to dismiss
the historicist view, but it’s certainly no reason to dismiss the mythicist
view either. That would be throwing the baby out with the bath water.

As to my question about the state of the evidence, and my
comment that we have competing stories contained in different religious
traditions about Jesus, such as Islam and the Koran, SJ had this to say:

“This is a fair question, yet I believe it is a question that is answered in
the vein of common sense: the evidence that best attests to the existence of
Jesus (or any historical figure) is the evidence that is far less removed from
his life.”

You’d be surprised at how many Christians I speak to lack
this common sense which SJ speaks of. I’m not referring to your
educated, professor of New Testament studies at your local
State University theologically minded type of Christian, but rather
your average everyday church going Christian. Which is why most Christians
cannot do any better than cite the Bible it seems. They have no desire to
confirm their faith, because that would require testing it and holding it up to
scrutiny, and then it wouldn’t be a simple matter of taking it all on faith
anymore. One might be placed in danger of genuine doubt, and why doubt when you
can simply have faith and take your beliefs for granted?

Indeed, SJ is not mistaken. What the historian looks for is
that evidence which is not far removed from the person’s life in which the
evidence can be confirmed as a reliable record of the person’s existence and,
if we have an abundance of evidence, a record which chronicles their life. Even
so much as Caesar’s face on a coin gives credence to the person’s life when the
coins are from the era of Caesar’s reign. As the old axiom goes, the Devil is
in the details.

SJ goes on to affirm the best evidence for the historicity
of Jesus is the Bible itself, noting:

“That is to say, the Gospels and the letters of Paul are
closest to the time when Jesus lived and they claim to derive from those who
were closest to Jesus, whereas the Koran, written around five hundred years
after Jesus lived, shows absolutely no continuity with the line of Jesus
tradition and is too far removed to have any historically significant bearing
on said tradition.”

It’s hard to discern whether Paul actually ever
believed in a historical Jesus or not. You’d be surprised to learn that
this is not as controversial of a statement as it may initially sound.
Mainstream scholars have suspected Paul’s visions were of an already ascended
*spiritual Christ for years, and Paul’s neglect to mention the slightest
biographical detail of the most important figure of his time, and the man
he worshiped no less, is peculiar to say the least.

As the Biblical historian James D. Tabor admits, what Paul
believed is actually a lot more complicated than what you’ll likely hear from
the pulpit. Tabor informs us that

“In Paul’s view of resurrection of the dead the body is left behind like
an old change of clothing, to turn to the dust, whereas the spirit is
“reclothed” with a new spiritual body.Resurrection is neither
corpse revival nor transformation of the physical “body of dust” into a
spiritual form.”[2]

So the question becomes, then what did Paul believe about Jesus?

In his book The Human Faces of God, Christian scholar Thom Stark, quoting historian Richard Hays, shares with us that

“Paul’s reading of Scripture is not constrained by a
historical scrupulousness about the original meaning of the text.
Eschatological meanings subsumes original sense.”[3]

So right off the bat we understand that Paul wasn’t trying
to establish a historical Jesus nor was it important for him to do so. Although
this opens up a whole series of questions for another time, I only wanted to
show that SJ’s assumption that Paul believed in a historical Jesus takes for
granted what historians can discern of Paul’s theological beliefs,
even full well knowing that Paul ever only claimed to have visions of
a Celestial type of Jesus, which is as far removed from history
as any testimony can be.

All citing Paul’s writing about encountering the ethereal spirit
version of Jesus proves historically is that Paul had visions. It in no
way confirms there was a historical Jesus. And even if we were able to confirm
that Paul believed in a historical Jesus all we could say is that Paul believed there
was a historical Jesus—but that would simply be the ardent claim of a believer,
no different than any other claims of spiritual believers today who also
believe in a historical Jesus. I do not doubt they believe what they claim, but
proving it is another matter entirely.

As for the Koran’s version of Jesus, this is an obvious
borrowing from the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, a second century
psuedigrapha, the earliest of which is quoted by Irenaeus of Lyon, ca 185.[4] In both the Koran and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas
a young Jesus turns a clump of clay into a living dove which flies away. This
of course fits with the Christian symbol for God’s light filling Jesus, as you
will recall the dove descending upon Jesus during his baptism by John. So the
Koran’s Jesus stems from a source that is at least as old as the second century
but could be as early as the 80s, placing it alongside the dates when the
canonical gospels were written.[5]

Continuing on, SJ quotes Bart Ehrman, who tells us that
historians “prefer to have sources that are relatively near the date of
the person or event that they are describing.”

This is true for numerous reasons, but primarily because the
further away you get from the source (or source material) of an event the less
reliable witness testimony becomes. Which is why the further away you are from
any given event in time the more skeptical scrutiny you must apply to account
for any possible factors that would confuse or alter the transmission of the
original message. Anyone who has ever played the telephone game (also called
Chinese whispers) will know that it is a lot more difficult the more people you
add to the the line of those transmitting the message. If each person
is symbolic of one year, imagine 2,000 people standing in a line
trying to get the message all the way to the end without losing the original
content. Of course, it’s not a perfect analogy, but it’s an apt one which often
gets brushed aside. After all, we have texts, do we not? But even before the
texts there were at least 70 odd years of messages (remember, Paul said nothing
about the biographical history of Jesus). So that’s the equivalent of
about 70 people standing in line playing Chinese whispers. I dare you to
try it!

Of course, you don’t need to be a scholar to realize there
is a risk associated with putting too much emphasis on eyewitness testimony. My
brother-in-blog Mike D. over at the A-Unicornist recently
wrote an excellent blog showcasing the problems with eyewitness testimony.
Among the some of the weaknesses of eyewitness testimony that Mike
informs we need to be aware of are 1) reconstructive memory, 2)
unreliability of individual eyewitness recollection, 3) problems of
leading or influencing the witness, 4) false memories, 5) inability to
confirm witness accounts by independent third parties, and 6)
subjective variance in the interpretation and reporting of the
*witnessed event, which often leads to discrepant variations of the event
quite literally the moment after it happens.[6]

Now, I personally feel that the Gospel narratives internally
disprove that there was any actual eyewitnesses by themselves without the help
of making any outside the Bible assumptions. The very fact that the
eyewitnesses often times talk about Jesus in the third person, doing
things like praying alone in the garden of Gethsemane, or conversing with Satan
and being transported through space and time with the Ghost of Future-past, not
to forget Mark’s ending with the women stumbling upon the empty tomb, and then
fleeing and telling nobody of it! Such accounts are obviously fictional when
the author writes that nobody was there to see these things, or that Jesus was
alone at these times, because then how do they know? Well, obviously they know
because they created the story.

Christians love to harmonize such Biblical accounts though
and come up with ad hoc theories to justify it, such as
supposing that Jesus told them about his wild adventures with the Devil after
the fact, and they are just recording the stories for posterity. Of course,
this type of harmonizing comes with its own set of problems, such as, how do we
know Jesus was telling the truth? He may have simply been pulling their legs,
or maybe he was delusional, after all Jesus’s detractors accused him of being a
raging drunk and he never once denied the accusation. Along with his affinity to
turning water into wine, it seems that if it came down to the probability
of Jesus being drunk off his rocker or that these fabulous tales really did
happen, the drunk off his rocker has the higher probability of being true. The
only reason Christians don’t think so is because they presuppose Jesus’s
divinity not his drunkeness.

Here's the point I’m getting at. We cannot
presuppose Jesus' divinity and then defend the historicity of Jesus while
holding these presuppositions about him, because it biases the way we read the
text. Jesus very well could have performed miracles, turned water into wine,
walked and talked with Satan, and told his Disciples amazing stories about
himself—sure. But the question is whether or not any of this can be demonstrated using
the tools of the historian.

SJ feels that the earlier the account of the stories about
Jesus the more likely they are to be accurate:

“How, which early sources give us the best chance of
deducing historical facts regarding Jesus? Well we have the writings of Paul
dated from 49 to around 62 CE (that is, only 16 to 29 years removed). Then we
have the Gospels of Mark (70 CE), Matthew and Luke (80-90 CE), Q material which
Matthew and Luke shared, and John (90-95). Just from these writings alone we
have six, that is, six sources that attest to the existence of Jesus.”

That’s fine, but that doesn’t prove the historicity of
Jesus. All that proves is that there were early Christians who believed in a
man by this name to be the foretold Messiah.

However, that’s all we can say from a historical point of
view. To claim more than this would require corroborating evidence outside of
the Bible. The fact that this evidence doesn’t exist
outside Christianity is a problem. It doesn’t mean there couldn’t
have been a Jesus who worked miracles and taught the good word, but what
it does mean is that such a claim is not reliable. It’s not reliable because it
cannot be confirmed. That’s what we mean by historically reliable. A claim
about a historical person or event must be corroborated by
others outside of the events themselves. Notice, however, that all of
Jesus followers, such as the disciples and the Apostles, are all a
part of the events being claimed as historical. That’s a lot like citing
alien abductees eyewitness testimony and blog articles to support the existence
of little green men. Because they were (themselves) part of the event, their
testimony needs to be corroborated by other evidence. Did NORAD track
an unidentified vessel breaching New Mexico airspace? Were there
strange lights seen by others previous or prior to the said event? Were
there any other recorded anomalies such as strange
weather occurrences, recovered wreckage, or filmed alien autopsies; and so
on and so forth.

As with alien abductees who, like Fox Mulder, want to
believe, I don’t doubt their sincerity. But verifying their claims as
actual events, let alone historical events, is different than simply claiming
this is what alien abductees tend to believe. The same is true for the claims
made about Jesus by his followers. I don’t doubt their sincerity, but what can
we prove?

SJ quotes his favorite go to historian Bart Ehrman:

"For a historian these provide a wealth of materials to
work with, quite unusual for accounts of anyone, literally anyone, from the
ancient world[…] If historians prefer lots of witnesses that corroborate one
another’s claims without showing evidence of collaboration, we have that in
relative abundance in the written sources that attest to the existence of the
historical Jesus."

Of course, my above analogy about alien abductees is
intended to show how such testimony, even of corroborated claims, can still be
problematic when the corroborated claims come only from people experiencing the
event and not from outside the event. I understand that it doesn’t
rule out their testimony as fallacious, but it simply means we
cannot conclude that anything happened as they claim it happened without
further investigation. Even this isn’t the entirety of the problem though because
where the Bible is concerned it seems there is very little extra-biblical evidence
to corroborate with. That is, outside of the Bible, nobody claims to have
met or heard Jesus. Rather, the claim is always this: that people in and around
the first century knew of Christians who believed in a messianic figure called
Jesus.

That is the extent of it. Of course, I find myself thinking
there was a historical Jesus for reasons other than what can be confirmed, but
more on that later. It simply is worth noting that we cannot be certain,
because of the verifiable sort of evidence we’d require to bring
our doubts to rest.

SJ notes that

“…even if some of these sources are dependent on one another
in some passages—for example, Matthew and Luke on Mark—they are completely
independent in others, and to that extent they are independent witnesses.”

I would argue this suggests quite the opposite. Because we
know about the relatedness of Gospel stories, what historians refer to as the
Synoptic Problem, all we can say is that the parts not borrowed from one
another have a greater chance of being made up than they do being original,
independent, accounts simply not known by any of the other Gospel writers. We
know this because the Gospels demonstrate a pattern of one-way
literary embellishment. This is no more noticeable than in the
gospel accounts of the empty tomb.

We begin with Mark’s version of the story, in which two
women discover the tomb, flee in fright, and tell no one about it. According to the New Testament historian and
theologian David Trobisch:

“The resurrected Christ
has not appeared and the first witnesses say nothing to anyone.’ This is the
worst imaginable ending for a Gospel.”[7]

Of course, the other gospels simply add more and more to the
account, hence the embellishment giving way to the storytelling
elements of the event, which is the logical conclusion otherwise you have to
believe that there were literally three different accounts of the same event.
About this obvious exaggeration Tabor states:

“Although our New Testament gospels contain historical material, the
theological editing is a factor that the discerning reader must constantly keep
in mind.… What I don’t think was happening was that there were people
going around and saying, “I saw him,” as a revived flesh-and-blood corpse. That
comes later. The reason I say that is because there are no Resurrection
appearances in Q or in Mark. If they were so well known and so widespread, how
could Mark write a Gospel and not put them in? If you read the Gospels in
chronological order, Mark has no appearances, Matthew has one to the disciples
and one to Mary Magdalene, Luke has several, and John has the most, and these
get more and more “physical,” so that finally Jesus even eats with his
disciples. What’s happening is that you get this embellishment of legend and a
magnification of the theology.”[8]

About the authors embellishments in the book of Matthew,
Christian historian Thom Stark laments:

“It is apparent, then, that what Matthew is doing is not
historical-grammatical exegesis.”[9]

The divergent accounts found in the Gospel narratives for
the same event aren’t what are considered “historically reliable” by most
historians outside of mainstream Biblical studies, because the stories, in each
case, change so drastically that we have to wonder, as Tabor rightly points
out, why didn’t anyone of the other authors make note of it?

Why, for example, didn’t anyone else outside of the
Christian community for that matter?

Explaining it as a literary embellishment solves
the riddle, explains for the theological alterations, and is much more
plausible than each one of the events being accounted for differently, as if all
the Gospel writers were there, on the day, recording the event only to
selectively pick out the parts they felt interesting and leave out the rest and we are left scratching our heads.

I raised the issue that citing the Bible disqualifies the
evidence, not only because it would be circular, but because the Bible is
untrustworthy when it comes to historical records of antiquity. Answering my
charge that using the Bible to prove the Bible historically reliable would be
circular, and hence invalid—at least without any way to check the validity of
the Biblical claims, which has been my contention all along—SJ states:

“The Bible is not a book that was delivered already intact.
Rather, it is a collection of pieces of historiography, poetry, philosophy,
myth, legend, and apocalyptic literature. The Bible is an anthology, and was
only put together as a single book years after the writings
were written. So, to deduce the historicity of many things in the Bible we
must look at the Biblical evidence.”

True. The Bible is a jambalaya of various
sorts of texts, all thrown into the pot together, and some of them make
historical claims, and some of them make mythological claims, and most of the
time these claims are no way separated in the minds of
first century believers. It is only after the fact that we can look at the
Bible, with our modern bulwark of knowledge and ability to fact check, that we
discover the various sorts of genre within the Bible. But all this is besides
the point. It seems SJ and I concur that it is the Biblical evidence we must
concern ourselves with.

About my claim that the gospels are historically unreliable
over all, because they get so much wrong, SJ argues that

“The gospels are not only either completely trustworthy or
completely untrustworthy; this is a false dichotomy. Rather, there are varying
degrees of reliability, and the gospels contain both reliable material and
unreliable material.”

Of course, I wasn’t making the claim for everything the
Gospels being unreliable. I was making the claim that because so much of
the Gospel narratives do, in fact, turn out to be historical falsified,
therefore it goes without sayinh they are extremely unreliable, and this fact puts a greater impetus on how
we determine whether or not the Gospel claims about Jesus are reliable or
not—and all this must be determined before we can say either way whether they
are historically reliable in the first place. Reliability
cannot simply be assumed. It must be demonstrated.

SJ is right with one respect though, if we acknowledge the
historical unreliability of the overall text, it doesn’t mean
everything is forfeit, just that it is highly unreliable. So we have
to devise a stricter method of objective analysis for determining which
historical claims are accurate in order to gain a sense of the reliability of
that claim. In other words, the objective scrutiny of the historian cannot rely
on their feelings of the texts trustworthiness, but from a demonstrated
reliability in which the text matches up with known evidence which corroborates
or supports the claims made by that text and the author writing it. Simply to
claim it has some historically reliable material doesn’t get rid of the
problem. At best, it’s a dodge for not having to address the full weight of
problem to begin with.

SJ makes a couple of points, pointing out that:

“Scholars have long recognized that the gospels are not perfect
or faultless pieces of historiography. Yet,they do believe that the
gospels all give an overall picture of Jesus that we can be relatively certain
of, and it is this overall picture that scholars look for.”

Although I agree with his first claim, about scholars
recognizing the imperfection of the Gospels, I do not fully see eye to eye with
his second claim that most scholars believe that the overall picture of Jesus
can be relatively certain. SJ quotes critical scholar Dale Allison,
who mentions that the themes and motifs of the Gospels are consistently
attested over a wide range of material, but as I noted above, only by
Christians and only in Christian material and by nobody else. If it was
attested to in a wide range of material including non-Christian
sources, such as Jewish and Pagan sources, then it would gain the consistency
that Allison eludes to. This not being the case however, I think it is a bit of
wishful thinking to claim that the Gospel narratives give an overall picture
of Jesus that we can be certain of.

What can we be certain of, exactly? Well, SJ articulates the
main points about Jesus’ life that virtually all sources agree on:

1) He had a failed
ministry in Nazareth

2) He was baptized by John the
Baptist

3) His parents were Mary and
Joseph

4) He had a brother named James
(even Josephus corroborates this)

5) He had a ministry in Galilee

6) He had a group of followers

7) He welcomed and conversed
with those seen as “sinners”

8) He was seen a wonder worker and
miracle performer

9) He engaged in frequent
disagreements with the Pharisees and religious leaders of his time

10) He frequently preached to groups of people

11) He vigorously preached the coming of the
Kingdom of God

12) He made a final trip to Jerusalem

13) He made a scene in the Temple

14) He ate a last meal with his followers

15) He was betrayed by one of his followers

16) He was handed over to the religious leaders

17) He was sentenced to crucifixion by Pontius Pilate

18) He died by crucifixion

It seems to me SJ, like many Christians, has simply
succumbed to what they feel should be historically plausible not what it
possible for the historian to prove as historically true. SJ’s go-to biblical
scholar Bart D. Ehrman explians:

“When it comes to fiction, in nearly all its forms, readers
agree to suspend judgment on the historical accuracy of the details of the
narrative, while expecting, nonetheless, that the account will be historically
plausible.”[10]

Additionally, it seems SJ has probably left out the most
important of Christian creeds here, namely the belief in the resurrection
itself as a historical event. As C.S. Lewis once noted, if Jesus was not in
fact the living Lord, then he was either a liar or a lunatic. So we can assume
that SJ, being a Christian, does embrace the resurrection event.

The scholar of first century science Richard Carrier has
written an excellent comment about Jewish and early Christian beliefs with
regard to burial rights and the likelihood of
bodily resurrection in the anthology The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the
Grave. But on the historical veracity of the matter, Carrier remarks:

“Whatever the case, both hidden gods and bodily gods were
encountered all the time in the ancient world—actually seen, actually spoken
to, and actually believed to be real and solid. But few today would regard
these encounters as genuine. There is no goddess Africa, no resurrected
Romulus. Or surely, if it is your intention to claim so, you have a pretty heavy
burden to meet if you want to make your case. This is the context we must
embrace when we examine the Christian appearance tradition.”[11]

Needless to say, simply rehashing orthodox Christian creed
isn’t proof of anything. Everything SJ cited above is merely an assumption that
the stories about Jesus told by unknown authors that are contained in the
New Testament have historical truth to them. But that’s not at
all evident from the stories themselves. Even Ehrman admits as much.

“Can historians prove that Jesus was raised from the dead?”
(I always argue that, no, on one can prove it.) “Are the Gospel Accounts of
Jesus reliable?” (No, not completely.)…”[12]

How many, I wonder, have made this mistake reading the
Gospel narratives and the story of a resurrecting Jesus? Suspending their
judgement on historical accuracy of the narrative itself
in favor of simply having faith that, at the very least, it is plausible?
I would say a lot, otherwise there wouldn’t be so many Christians to believe in
the historical accuracy of the Gospels or the Bible to the degree we find.

SJ then makes the statement:

“Notice that all our sources (including Paul) agree on these
details.”

I probably should thank SJ for making my point for me. All
the NT sources we have do agree on all these details. But so what? That’s a
whole lot like saying that Christians believe all these things about Jesus.
Well, it’s exactly like saying that, because the NT are simply
canonized writings of what Christians of the period commonly believed.

As Ehrman would contend, that still doesn’t prove historical reliability.

Also, it's worth noting that we do not find any of these
claims preserved in Hebrew or Aramaic sources, as we might expect. This
raises the issue of the reliability of the
material itself, because we only have Coptic Greek works preserving
these Christian accounts, which doesn’t make much sense outside of a literary
tradition. After all, the Greeks wrote in Greek, the Jews wrote in Hebrew, and
Aramaic was the common spoken language of the Lavant at that time. It doesn’t
make sense to have only Greek renditions of what we’d expect to find in Hebrew
coming from Aramaic sources unless, I contend, they were fictions, in which
case, then it makes perfect sense as to why no original copies in Hebrew from
the Aramaic have ever been recovered. [13]

SJ then makes the comment that:

“Such an abundance of convergence is a goldmine for
historians, especially since Jesus was not an aristocrat or any type of
higher-up, but was rather a simple Galilean preacher who gained a following. It
is simply ridiculous, in my eyes and the eyes of most historians, to claim that
the above facts have no reality in an early First Century person named Jesus.”

Convergence of agreement about the details of Jesus doesn’t
matter here, because it’s not a convergence of agreement from outside sources.
It’s a convergence of agreement by a group of writers all believing, more
or less, similar things about Jesus. That’s like saying there is
a convergence of agreement of details about Harry Potter being the “chosen”
one in J.K. Rowling's romping childrens fantasy series. Of course there is a
convergence of agreement in the Gospels, because they were written to agree
with one another (more or less). At least, they agree with each other on
certain key theological positions among Christians. The problem isn’t the
agreement, it’s the amount of disagreement we find because much like Harry
Potter everyone among the early Christians thought their theology
should be the “chosen” one.[14]

Actually, this all cuts to the point, doesn’t it?

Outside of the Gospel tradition it doesn’t seem there is any
convergence of agreement to any of these “facts” about Jesus. Outside of the
Jewish historian Josephus and Tacitus, we hardly even find mention of
Christians, and certainly not Jesus Christ.

It is true, however, that there is one line in
Josephus’ Antiquities which makes mention of a man crucified of whom
Christians believed to be the Christ. Although it seems a fallacious interpolation.
Nonetheless, many Christians continue to believe Josephus’ account to
be genuine, so let us take a brief look at what Josephus says, shall we?

The first century historian Titus Flavius Josephus wrote
about a person called “Christos” that Christians worshiped in his Antiquity
of the Jews, writing:

“Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be
lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of
such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of
the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He
was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the
principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved
him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the
third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand
other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so
named from him, are not extinct at this day”[15]

Josephus’ description of the person named Jesus
crucified under Pilate is primarily in regard to what Christians
believed. The problem is, however, the part that mentions Jesus Christ,
using “Christos”, is a demonstrable interpolation added by later
Christian (quite late actually—as it seems to be inserted around of after the
third century). Allow me to offer a brief comment on why the
majority of modern historians tend to discount the reference to Jesus
Christ in Josephus. Two things to keep in mind:

1) Josephus was a Jewish historian writing in the first
century (circa 37-70 C.E.), and so he would have never referred to an Ascetic
Jewish Prophet who had died leaving prophecy unfulfilled as the Messiah, let
alone a *divine prophet, and so he could not have referred to Jesus as the
Christ. No orthodox Jew of antiquity believed Jesus was the chosen messiah, nor
would any Jew have considered Christ to be divine—in any sense of the
word—since the Jews continued to hold the covenant with Yahweh believing him to
be the one true God. As such, Josephus would *not have called the Jewish
messiah by the Greek "Christos." As Christ's divinity would have been
seen as blasphemous to any first century Jew—but not to later Christians—it's a
strong bet that this Christos business is a later Christian
theological consideration. Josephus' utilization of the Greek “Christos” and
not the Hebrew "messiah," at the time of his writing, seems to be out
of place, and thus a likely denotes a later addition.

But the biggest give away is the second fact:

2) The earliest Christian writers, such as Origen and Justin
the Martyr, frequently quote Josephus but often quote from an earlier version
which lacks any reference to Jesus being the Christ. And since their account of
Josephus is from an earlier source than the one modern
Christian apologists love to quote mine from, we can reasonably be sure that
the later addition of Jesus being referred to as the Christ, at the very least,
suggests a Christian forgery from no earlier than the third century.[16]

If we consider the earliest copy of Josephus, Origen’s copy,
we are left with perhaps a more accurate representation of the earliest known
version of the text. Contrary to what Christians might espouse, it actually is
evidence against the Gospel Jesus being historically real. The
reason I say this is because the Jesus which Josephus is likely recording is
not the Christian savior but at all, but Jesus Barabbas (as
NRSV) which seems the more historically plausible considering early MSS of
Matt. 27:16f. states it was Jesus Barnabas which Pilate was condemning and
sentencing to death. Therefore Josephus isn’t even referring to Jesus “the
Christ” in the first place, and since we know “Christ” is the forged element of
the text we must discard it. Instead Josephus is most likely referring to Jesus
Barabbas. The only way to ignore this, it seems, is to ignore the early MSS of
Matthew in favor of a third century forgery. But that would be bad scholarship.

In our initial exchange I quizzed SJ as to what we
may make of the Jesus of the Gospels? The Gospels are also stories, are
they not? If not, and they are historical documents, I asked, why don’t they
read like other historical documents of the day? Of course, I had in mind the
writing of Tacitus and Josephus (since all the others come too late to preserve
authentic first person reporting).[17] SJ
responds:

“I maintain that Tristian (sic) is simply ignorant of modern
scholarship regarding the nature of the gospels.”

I would invite Steven Jake to browse my blog The
Advocatus Atheist and look at some of the articles which mention these
issues for gaining insights into how “ignorant” I may be on these matters. A
simple search in the search bar should reveal some insightful results. He continues
on to say:

“Most scholars, even critical scholars agree that the
gospels are of the form of ancient Roman biographies. The gospels seem to be
written in the form of narrative because these gospels were to be read aloud
for an audience.”

The oral tradition of the Gospels is accurate. But
determining whether or not they can be classified a historical
biographies is another matter. That is to say, they read like historically real
fictions, according to Christian theologian and scholar Hans Frei in
his book The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and
Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics.[18]

In fact, Frei goes as far as to call the Gospels “devotional
narratives” and claims they are to be thought of as narratives divorced from
history. He observes that it is only a recent eighteenth and nineteenth century
development in Christian hermeneutics in which Christians
are trying to justify the Gospels as having an “historical” context. Frei
contends they are not historical texts. I am fully in agreement of his line of
reasoning.

Of course the real reason I and others skeptics like me
continue to study Biblical history at all, I’d assume, is because we genuinely
are fond of the history of it. We also do not like to see people distort that
history simply to force it to conform to their worldview. Rather, their
worldview would do better to take an honest and, most certainly, objective look
at what history has to say.

SJ says:

“Yet, mythicists rarely tend to ask the question of why
Jesus has no contemporary outside attestation.”

That’s not true. Anyone who is familiar with the numerous
historians who have proposed many of the arguments which comprise the mythicist
view will simply know that’s not true. It’s not true because it discounts well
known historicist skeptics such as Charles François Dupuis (1742–1809);
Constantin-François Volney(1757–1820); David Strauss (1808–1874); Bruno Bauer
(1809–1882); Edwin Johnson (1842-1901); Dutch Radical School (1880-1950);
Albert Kalthoff (1850–1906); W. B. Smith (1850–1934); J. M. Robertson (1856–1933);
Thomas Whittaker (1856-1935); Arthur Drews (1865–1935); Paul-Louis Couchoud
(1879-1959); and more recently those such as G.A. Wells and Robert M. Price—all
of whom address that very issue.

Whenever a Christian believer/historian feels threatened by
competing skeptical theories regarding their faith they will quickly turn to
attempting to discredit the person rather than the theory. You know that Robert
M. Price fellow, right? He’s a quack and a fringe historian!

You’d be surprise at how many times I’ve been told this to
my face that I feel embarrassed for the person saying it, and
not just because I know Bob and he’s a friend and fellow Lovecraftian, but
because it demonstrates that the person is almost in every case unfamiliar with
the scholars work, so they simply rehash the apologetic tactic of trying to
disqualify the person based on no other criteria than the fact that they dare
to offer an alternative theory that goes against the mainstream.

But as Hector Avalos, associate professor of Religious
Studies at Iowa State University, reminds us:

“Biblical scholars for example, are almost solely devoted to
maintaining the cultural significance of the Bible not because any knowledge it
provides is relevant to our world but because of the self-serving drive to
protect the power position of the biblical studies profession.”[19]

As Avalos observed, this knee jerk reaction by Christian
historians to alternative theories that do not comport with their established
theology (and privilaged consensus views) are simply catering to
the self-serving drive of trying to preserve a position that keeps bread on
the tables for so many believers. God forbid a Biblical scholar have to go
out and find a real job!

For a time I too considered becoming a theologian or a Bible
scholar. I even applied to get my Masters in Theology when I was still a
believer. But postponing my degree to come to Japan, I had time to reflect, and
I decided it was as the Biblical scholar Joseph R. Hoffman quipped:

“I have come to the following conclusion: Scholarship
devoted to the question of the historicity of Jesus, while not a total waste of
time, could be better spent gardening.”

So I withdrew my application and moved on to better and
brighter things, you might say.

Moving on, SJ asks:

“[W]ho exactly would we expect to record Jesus? Jesus,
remember, stayed in Galilee for his ministry, and Galilee was the home of pious
Jews. So which historians would we expect to be in Galilee that would be around
to report the Jesus movement?”

Not Greek speaking chroniclers, that’s for sure! Many may
say, hold on a minute, but wasn't that the dominant language of the
day? Well, it's not to say Greek wasn't frequently used, as English is today,
but in a mainly illiterate society, why Greek? Wouldn't most Jews who kept
their customs alive maintain using Hebrew to tell what essentially is a story about
a Jewish rabbi? The fact that the Greeks are the ones telling the story--means
that educated people from elsewhere--and probably much later--were creating the
story for their own theological purposes, and has little to do with traditional
Jewish orthodoxy.

At any rate, Josephus is the best candidate we have for
anyone who would have written in detail about Jesus, and he was in and around
Judea, yet he barely mentions him in just one line of a hijacked copy of a
text. Josephus reports about the existence of a Jesus that Christians followed
at the time, but that’s really all we have. It seems to me he is just reporting
on what Christians believed, as he indicates no other bibliographical
information of Jesus, his mission, who he was or where he was from, only that
Christians believed he was the messiah.

SJ’s list of things we can know about the historical Jesus
only works if you assume the gospels are historical records of Jesus which are
reliable, but my point is that this has not been demonstrated. It has merely
been assumed by SJ as it has been assumed by most Biblical scholars who take
the historicist view simply because it confirms their faith—not because it is
the correct view worth taking. What the correct view is, we cannot say, we
simply do not have the evidence to claim either way whether Jesus was
historical. What we can say is that the Gospels seem to be works of fiction, at
least, such a position cannot be ruled out. If true, and fiction is all they
are, then what of the historical Jesus?

SJ adds one last point, telling us that

“Furthermore, it should be remembered that the Jesus
movement was not the only movement in Judea. There were tons of messianic and
apocalyptic movements happening in Judea, and it makes sense that none would
see the need to bother to record one more seeming fringe cult. As John Meier
notes, ‘Jesus was a marginal Jew leading a marginal movement in a marginal
province of a vast Roman Empire.’”

All this is true, of course. Which is why I always get a
laugh out of Monty Python’s The Life of Brian and the confusion between whether
it is the Judea's People Front or the People’s Front of Judea.
But the varieties of Christianity in the early first century only serves to
highlight the problem.

There were many competing types of Jesus belief, from
Gnostic Cosmic Deity, to stoic philosophical guru, to holy Jewish messiah, to
gentile redeemer among many other interpretations of these. One thing to note,
however, the Jews didn’t actually believe Jesus was the messiah, however (that’s
a Christian belief); as evidenced by James failure to worship his brother as
such. If James the Just didn’t worship Jesus as the messiah then he couldn’t
have really been the Jewish messiah, could he? This of course has been a
theological problem for Christians for centuries, so I won’t get into it here,
but it’s worth noting that it represents yet another variety of Jesus we have
contained in the gospels.

About my point that it seems most of the Jesus stories are
simply retellings—or reformulations—of many Old Testament patriarchs, and that
they parallel each other in plot, structure, and form to the point of strongly
hinting that they are a Midrashim of sorts, SJ observes:

“Tristian (sic) has picked up this hypothesis from Robert
Price. I myself have read Price’s books and find them to be rife with errors
and sloppy scholarship.”

Yes and no. I do enjoy Prices taking this concept and
fleshing it out further,[20] but I picked up on it
from my reading of G.A. Wells who initially brought the concept to my
attention. Additionally, it’s not only the Midrash-like elements we need to be
concerned about because it seems that the gospel narratives, apart from echoing
Old Biblical stories, also copy the themes and patterns of well known Greek
epics, such as the Iliad and Odyssey.

In The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark historian
and biblical scholar Dennis R. MacDonald makes the strong case that the Markan
author borrowed extensively from the Odyssey. In his follow up
study Does the New Testament Imitate Homer MacDonnald
demonstrates quite convincingly that the Acts of the Apostles borrows
extensively from Homer’s Iliad. It’s heavy reading but well worth
it if you think the New Testament isn’t at all fictional, or at least heavily
molded to popular fictions of the day. Randal Helms also notes as much in his
book, aptly titled Gospel Fictions, observing:

“The Gospels are, indeed—and to a much greater degree than
those who read them with pious inattention even begin to realize—imaginative
literature.”

Helms goes on to cite the work of B.H. Streeter, Reginal
Fuller, and Norman Perrin who all believed that the Gospels were spawned by the
“creative imagination” of the Evangelical authors.

SJ then makes the baffling statement that

“Tristian (sic) is correct to label these midrash. Yet, I’m afraid Tristian
seems to be ignorant of what exactly midrash is. Midrash is a literary
technique that is well known to scholars because the Second Temple Qumran
exegetes constantly employed them.”

I never said they weren’t. I specifically recall saying the
Gospels were a sort of Midrashim. That is, they can be read as
a type of Midrashim, not that they are actually Jewish Midrash. They are the
works of Evangelical authors who used their understanding of the way in which
Midrash works to write a Midrash-like novel. That’s all I meant, and I felt it
was implicitly clear, but I am always happy to clarify.

In his concluding remarks Steven Jake tells us that

“I maintain that we have seen no good evidence for denying
the existence of Jesus.”

True, but that wasn’t exactly my point. My point was,
specifically, that we lack the evidence to confirm the existence of a
historical Jesus. Why, then, should we automatically assume a historical Jesus?
It’s not an assumption we can make given the evidence, or rather lack thereof.
That’s not quite the same thing as denying Jesus walked the Earth altogether,
mind you. SJ continues on to say:

“I’m sure Tristian (sic) can produce much more cogent
arguments and was simply producing off-the-cuff questions.”

I hope this response is satisfactory. SJ again espouses that
I am a mythicist, claiming:

“Mythicism, I will remind you, is a fringe position. It is
not a position held by the majority of scholars, even critical scholars, and
hopefully we have seen why.”

Again, just for the record, I’m not a mythicist. I lean
toward a Legendary hypothesis, the one “L” that C.W. Lewis neglected to mention
in his infamous Trilema formulation in which he posited that Jesus could only
have been a Liar, a Lunatic, or Lord. There is always a third option!

Of course, my initial comments were directed at the fact that
we cannot prove Jesus existed so there is no reason to assume he did unless you
have a very thorough understanding of Scripture, in which case, the points are
subtle but perhaps not compelling enough to say with any certainty, which
brings us right back to the problem of historicity of Jesus! I lean toward the
inclination to think that there was a historical figure lurking in the penumbra
of ancient history named Jesus whose legend ran wild—until an incredible story
got embellished so much it became a magical story—unbelievable even.

At any rate, I tend to remain agnostic as to the conclusion
of whether there really was a historical Jesus even as I lean toward the
Legendary hypothesis. The Gospel Jesus is certainly a work of fiction, but I’d
like to imagine him based on a real person. But for those who think the
mythicist position is simply disqualified because it is “fringe” then they are
the first ones who need to go back and give it a closer look.

Fringe, in any case, is simply another way of saying ‘alternative’ and it
offers a very compelling alternative theory which explains the rise of
Christianity and belief in Jesus via secular and skeptical inferences which,
naturally, contend many of the traditional Orthodox modes of thought.
But if we never challenged the orthodoxy then we would never know whether
or not we truly were in presence of the truth or something else altogether.
It’s those who refuse to consider other positions who ultimately limit their
overall understanding.

I would like to thank Steven Jake for being thorough in his
response to my initial comment and his willingness to continue his discussion
with an atheist in a respectful and cordial manner. I think we both learned a
lot from each other, if not on historical matters then certainly on why each of
us necessarily believe what we do.

[13] See Randal Helms book Gospel
Fictions for a detailed analysis of why this is a problem. Also, you
may choose to review my own essay “Literary Jesus” in which I expound why it
makes more sense to view the Gospels as works of fiction than actual historical
documents, avialable online: http://advocatusatheist.blogspot.jp/2011/01/literary-jesus.html

[14] See Bart Ehrman’s Lost
Christianities and Jesus, Interupted for more on the
varieties of competing Christianity and the amount of conflict and
contradictions that arose because of it.